I, once again, humbly apologize for my extended leave of absence from the blog-sphere. As a student, my time is not my own, and officer I am sticking to that story.
There has been much going on in the month or so I have been away from my keyboard; I have finished finals (wonderful grades in all), added a few new plants to my growing family of backyard edibles, and have secured the front house for Bobby and I next year. The latter is amazing news, as I was very concerned as to how I was going to manage moving all of my root edibles (garlic, onion, potato) to a new home without them dying. Now I don't have to worry about such things and with the good news went out and bought strawberries. I will post new photos of my little plant community soon, but today I wanted to talk about a few books that have helped me immensely in my new lifestyle and to speculate about a few more I haven't gotten my dirt stained hands on yet.
The book that started it all, of course, was
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and family.
This book is essentially about a family who decides to forgo the luxury of purchasing imported goods in favor of a local and self-sufficient lifestyle. This was meant to try to cut down on the vast cost this country spends on fossil fuels, not only in the transportation of such goods but also in the manufacturing of them. Barbara tells the story of her family's transformation into the locavore lifestyle with colorful accuracy, and my heart was sold to the idea. I have taken to heart her declaration that vegetables are beautiful, and have taken it upon myself to give my backyard color and variety with plants that I can eat. I recommend this book to anyone. Even those who have never been interested by the idea of gardening themselves will be swayed to at least put a few herbs in their windows after reading it.
The Backyard Homestead, was my next natural step in becoming self-sufficient. This book has everything from growing herbs for tea to building and operating your own cider-press to raising and slaughtering your own chickens. Though I am far from ordering chicks from a catalog and raising them for meat or eggs (not that I don't want to but my landlords would never allow such a thing), this book has aided me in container gardening, making bread, and what herbs to put in teas to calm a sore throat.
This book is great for the burgeoning Homesteader.
Sunset's
Western Garden Book of Edibles has been my encyclopedia and, I am convinced, my success to growing such a prolific garden. This wonderful book holds answers to all of the questions I had about where to plant, how much sun a plant should have, whether it would grow well in containers, how much watering should be done, and so much more.
It even has some beautiful photos of landscaping ideas, how to turn your edible garden into a work of art. One of the useful tips it gave me was how to get protect my delicate plants from snails: copper foil and some beer in dishes did the trick.
The following books are those that are on my wish list.
